Super Bowl’s darkest secret: Sex Trafficking

This is the biggest sporting week of the year. Super Bowl week is upon us.

While there are many good things that come with the Super Bowl, including an increased revenue for the host city, there is also a dark secret that you may not know about. And this week in Atlanta, Georgia is expected to be no different.

Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry, according to DoSomething.org. It is behind Illegal drugs and arms trafficking.

It reportedly generates a profit of $32 billion per year. However, of that, there is $15.5 billion that is made in industrialized countries.

For many years, the authorities have had different campaigns in an attempt to combat sex trafficking. The Atlanta authorities have reportedly put a game plan in place for weeks now, according to media reports.

There will be tons of activities and parties within Atlanta and its suburbs. People will be flocking to the Dirty South from all over the country.

At the same time, there will be predators, who will seek out individuals, to do harm to them. They will look for ‘customers’ to buy for sexual exploitation, and/or labor.

These volunteers are being instructed to ‘learn something, see something, do something.’

According to Reuters, there were 750 arrests in nationwide sex trafficking sting operations before last year’s Super Bowl at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The story says it was the largest operation in 13-years.

The same story suggests there are 1.5 million people, who are the victims of sex trafficking per year. Mostly, it is via sexual exploitation with the majority of this coming from children.

Atlanta has also partnered with ‘It’s a Penalty’ campaign. It is a platform to help educate the public, who will be in the area for the parties, activities, or for the big game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday.

The campaign will also work with hospitality workers, taxi drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers to educate them about the problem of human trafficking.

“All this is, is a one-day snapshot into what otherwise is a 365-day problem,” Polaris, an anti-slavery group, CEO Bradley Myles said told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018.

“The same traffickers that are committing trafficking … during the Super Bowl, they’re going to wake up in the morning on Monday and do the same thing.”

This reportedly happens at all big events. This also happens at the World Cup and Olympics.

“We know sex trafficking occurs, it occurs every day,” the City Attorney of Minneapolis, Susan Segal, said at a public briefing of lawmakers about the sporting mega event in January 2018.